The Major Works (English Library)
Page 59
25. i.e. the lowest of low regions (the double plural of Tartarus). ‘Pluto’ in the next line, and in the next paragraph, corrects the erroneous ‘Plato’ of the 1st edition.
26. Melissa, in Herodotus, V, 92.
27. Odyssey XI, 225 ff.
28. As Homer’s grammar suggests in Odyssey, XI, 90 (Browne suppl., quoting the Greek).
29. ‘In Lucian’ (Browne marg.).
30. See below, p. 397, note 34.
31. The paragraph draws on Homer (Odyssey, XI, 141 ff., and XXIV, 6–9), and Leviticus 17.11 and 14.
32. The paragraph draws on Homer (Odyssey, XI, 48–50, 443–61, and 543–64), Virgil (Aeneid, VI, 494–7), and Dante (Inferno, X, 97–108).
33. Cf. Lucian’s dialogue Charon; and Odyssey, XI, 485–91.
34. Odyssey, XI, 601–4; Horace, Odes, I, xii, 46–8; and Aeneid, VI, 826 ff.
35. The Cave in The Republic, VII, 514 ff.
36. Inferno, IV (Browne marg.), where Pythagoras is not in fact mentioned, and Purgatorio, I, 31 ff. But ‘escapes’ may mean ‘escapes notice’ or ‘escapes condemnation’ (G2).
37. On Epicurus see also above, p. 258.
38. In Discourses, II, 2.
39. i.e. temperamentally outgrown.
40. High spirits, courage, bravery (OED; §176).
41. Cf. below, p. 405.
42. Inferno, X, 13–15.
43. i.e. the Pbaedo. So Plutarch in Cato Minor, LXVIII, 2, and LXX, 1.
44. i.e. the soul.
1. i.e. the Anglo-Saxon, the Danish, and the Norman (always assuming the urns to have been Roman). On this paragraph cf. De Quincey’s ‘annotation’, above, p. 38.
2. ‘Long continuance’ (Bullokar).
3. ‘Thus, when naught is left of me but bones, would I be laid to rest’ (Tibullus, III, ii, 26).
4. As above, p. 287, note 21.
5. So the Oracula magica with the scholia by Psellus and Gemistus Plethon (Browne marg.).
6. ‘proneness, propensity’ (Blount).
7. i.e. undistinguishableness.
8. ‘In the Psalme of Moses’ (Browne marg.): i.e. Psalm 90.10. The reference to Archimedes involves his directions in The Sand Reckoner for numbering the grains of sand in the universe.
9. ‘According to the ancient Arithmetick of the hand wherein the little finger of the right hand contracted, signified an hundred. Pierius in Hieroglyph.’ (Browne marg.).
10. 2 Samuel 8.2 and 1 Kings 11.1 ff.
11. ‘One night as long as three’ (Browne marg.) so that Zeus could enjoy her the more.
12. Job 3.1 ff.
13. ‘The puzling questions of Tiberius unto Grammarians’ as reported by Suetonius, Tiberius, LXX (Browne add.). See also below, p. 438, note 22.
14. Odyssey, X, 526 (Browne add.).
15. Job 3.13–15 (Browne add.).
16. Cf. above, p. 101: ‘not onely whole Countries, but particular persons have their Tutellary, and Guardian Angels’.
17. About 1000 B.C., the mid-point of the world’s history (see next note).
18. ‘That the world may last but six thousand years’ (Browne marg.) – i.e. from 4000 B.C. to A.D. 2000. See also below, p. 439, note 31.
19. ‘Hectors fame lasting above two lives of Methuselah [2 x 969 or 1938 years], before that famous Prince was extant’ (Browne marg.); so the fame of Charles V (b. 1500) can only extend some 500 years before the expected end of the world.
20. i.e. in the Lord’s prayer, ‘Thy Kingdom come’.
21. ‘θ The character of death’ (Browne marg.). The Greek letter theta (θ) is the initial of thanatos or death: ‘a theta described upon the judges’ tessera or ballot was a mark for death or capital punishment’ (SJ).
22. ‘Old ones being taken up, and other bodies laid under them’ (Browne marg.).
23. Gruterus’s Ancient Inscriptions (Browne marg.).
24. ‘Which men show in several Countries, giving them what Names they please; and unto some the Names of the old Ægyptian Kings out of Herodotus’ (Browne suppl.).
25. ‘I want it to be known that I exist, I do not wish it to be known what [sort of person] I am’ (Browne marg., quoting Cardan’s Latin, itself an adaptation of a phrase in Seneca’s On Benefits, VII, 19).
26. The patients are named as medical cases in several Hippocratic treatises. On Achilles’s horses see Iliad, XVI, 149–52.
27. As above, p. 71, note 50.
28. The one offered water to Christ (Matthew 15.22 ff.), while the other demanded the head of John the Baptist (14.6 ff.).
29. Chersiphon (according to Pliny, XXXVI, 21).
30. ‘Before the flood’ (Browne suppl.).
31. Referring to the widespread belief in nature’s decay (see §53).
32. ‘Euripides’ (Browne marg.), in a fragment from a lost play quoted by Plato, Gorgias, 492e.
33. i.e. our longest possible life is but as a winter’s day (R).
34. ‘According to the custome of the Jewes, who place a lighted waxcandle in a pot of ashes by the corps’ (Browne suppl.), as reported by Leon of Modena.
35. i.e. sleep (cf. below, p. 475). In Greek mythology, death and sleep are the children of Night.
36. i.e. callousness.
37. Changed to ‘continuing’ (K): a conjectural reading.
38. Ecclesiastes 1.14 (Browne marg.).
39. As a drug (M).
40. Telescopes (‘perspectives’) had in Browne’s time confirmed what had been observed by the naked eye, that comets and novae intruded upon the very regions above the moon declared by Aristotle to have been ‘incorruptible’ (On the Heavens, II, 1). Cf. §69.
41. Cicero, On the Laws, II, 23 (59).
42. According to the epitaph of Rufus and Veronica in Gruterus, ‘From their goods no more was found than was sufficient to pay for the pyre and pitch for cremating their bodies, and for the hired female mourner and the urn’ (Browne marg., quoting the epitaph in Latin). On Gruterus see above, p. 309, note 23.
43. ‘In Greek, Latine, Hebrew, Ægyptian, Arabick, defaced by Licinus the Emperor’ (Browne suppl.).
44. Enoch and Elijah were sometimes identified with the ‘two witnesses’ of Revelation 11.3 ff. who are yet to come.
45. i.e. the Last Judgement.
46. Revelation 20. 14 and 21. 8. See below, p. 445, note 48.
47. According to Jordandes (Browne marg.).
48. Isaiah 14.4–17 (Browne marg.).
49. ‘Angulus contingentiæ, the least of Angles’ (Browne marg.).
50. The rhythm of the mystical phrases is distinctly Browne’s, but the phrases themselves are commonplace. ‘Exolution’ intimates the soul’s release; ‘the Spouse’ is the Church (in the light of the Song of Solomon); ‘ingression into the divine shadow’ suggests entry into the paradoxical state wherein Lux est umbra Dei (as above, p. 71); etc.
51. ‘A term in logic, meaning that which is predicated or asserted’ (§176).
52. ‘In Paris where bodies soon consume’ (Browne marg.). John Evelyn noted on 1 April 1644: ‘I tooke a turne in St Inocents Church-yard where the story of the devouring quality of the ground (consuming Bodys in 24 houres), the Vast Charnells of Bones, Tombs, Piramids and sepultures tooke up much of my time’ (Diary, ed. E.S. de Beer [Oxford, 1955], II, 131).
53. ‘A stately Mausoleum or sepulchral pyle built by Adrianus in Rome, where now standeth the Castle of St. Angelo’ (Browne marg.).
54. ‘It matters not whether the corpses are burnt on the pyre or decompose with time’ (Lucan, Civil War, VII, 809–10).
1. Grandson of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the premier baronet who was half-brother to Sir Francis Bacon. In the 1st edition this dedication appears immediately after the one to Le Gros (above, pp. 263–5).
2. Two marginal notes here refer to Plempius, Cabeus, and Harvey.
3. The herbals ‘from America’ may allude to the work of Hernandes. Three marginal notes here also refer to Besler, Bauhin, and ‘My worthy friend M. Goodier an ancient and learned botanist’.
4. ‘As in London and divers parts, whereof we mention none, lest we seem to omit any’ (Browne marg.).
5. i.e. five-leaved and net-like.
6. i.e. botany.
7. Harvey’s discovery was sometimes said to have been anticipated by Hippocrates.
8. Two works by Hippocrates (Browne marg.) have digressions on sexual intercourse and tonsillitis, respectively.
9. See the diagram reproduced on p. 323 where the quotation from Quintilian (VIII, iii, 9) reads: ‘What is more beautiful than the well-known quincunx which, in whatever direction you view it, presents straight lines?’ Both diagram and quotation are borrowed from Curtius and della Porta (see below, p. 328, note 28).
10. ‘Rules without exceptions’ (Browne marg.) – i.e. the rule in Latin grammar that all final u’s are long (M).
11. i.e. valid.
12. e.g. Attalus (as below, p. 328, note 21).
13. Lauremberg and others, who speak of ‘tulipomania’ (Browne marg.).
14. On this solitary hint of the relationship between Hydriotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus, see above, p. 43.
15. 1 Corinthians 15.42.
16. ‘Eloquence has never been accepted without a measure of condonement’ (Browne marg., adapted from Seneca, Moral Letters, CXIV, 12).
17. Apelles used to hide behind his paintings to hear the remarks of the public (Pliny, XXXV, xxxvi, 84–5).
18. ‘Of the most worthy Sr. Edmund Bacon, prime Baronet, my true and noble Friend’ (Browne marg.). He was the son and heir of Sir Nicholas (above, p. 319, note 1).
19. Handfuls.
1. The running title of Chapters I–III (to p. 364) is ‘Cyrus-Garden, Or The Quincunx Naturally Considered’. Cf. below, p. 364, note 1.
2. Genesis 1.14 ff.
3. Genesis 1.12: ‘And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit’. The ‘Philosopher’ is ‘Plato in Timæo’ (Browne marg.).
4. ‘fronde tegi silvas’ (Browne marg.). From Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 44: ‘He ordered the woods to be covered with leaves’.
5. i.e. medicine.
6. i.e. surgery: ‘δiαίρeσіς [dissection], in opening the flesh. ξαίρєσς – [extraction], in taking out the rib. σνθєσις [synthesis] in closing up the part again’ (Browne marg.). Cf. Genesis 2.21–2.
7. i.e. rivalry with: opposition to.
8. i.e. while man was created on the sixth day, the earth – and gardens – were made on the third.
9. ‘For some there is [doubt] from the ambiguity of the word Mikedem [the Hebrew of Genesis 8.2], whether ab oriente [from the East] or a principio [from the beginning]’ (Browne marg.).
10. Ararat (Genesis 8.4).
11. The work is by Mago of Carthage (as reported by Pliny, XVIII, 3), here conflated with the ‘magus’ Zoroaster.
12. i.e. according to several theories.
13. Diodorus Siculus and other writers (e.g. Josephus) attribute the Hanging Gardens to a Syrian king who reigned subsequent to Semiramis.
14. ‘he was driven from men, and… his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws’ (Daniel 4.33).
15. From the Old Persian pairidaēza, enclosure or park.
16. Shushan (Browne marg.), described in Esther 1.5 ff.
17. i.e. his next younger: ‘Plutarch in the life of Artaxerxes’ (Browne marg.).
18. In his Anabasis.
19. Cf. Marvell, Upon Appleton House, stanzas 39 ff.
20. Odyssey XXIV, 223 ff.
21. Plutarch, Demetrius, XX, 2. Cf. below, p. 454, note 29.
22. Cf. Phalaris, etc.; also flowers like Iris and Hyacinth.
23. Xenophon, Oeconomicus, IV, 21, reports that Lysander on a visit to the palace at Sardis admired ‘the beauty of the trees in it, the accuracy of the spacing, the straightness of the rows, the [quincuncial] regularity of the angles’ (Browne marg., quoted in Greek).
24. Cicero, On Old Age, XVII (Browne marg.).
25. i.e. intersection: crossing to form the figure X. The quincunx (see above, p. 41, note 38) is ‘doubled at the angle’ in that two V’s (in Roman numerals) constitute an X – itself the Greek letter chi (as in ‘Jesus Christos’).
26. The pillar base in the ‘Tuscan’ architectural order.
27. Corrected from ‘regular’.
28. So Curtius and della Porta (Browne marg.), the principal sources throughout Chapter I (§300).
29. i.e. the X shape is made within a rectangle.
30. The allusion is to the ‘crucigerous’ or cross-bearing sign – the abarum – seen by Constantine the Great while marching against Rome (A.D. 312).
31. Also X-shaped.
32. i.e. upright.
33. Cross-piece.
34. The Greek leter ‘T’ was frequently regarded as symbolic of the Cross.
35. Footrest.
36. ‘X’ and ‘P’ (in Greek) often merged as in the labarum’s (above, note 30).
37. As those of Marius and Alexander (Browne marg.).
38. the sign ♀. Cf. below, p. 379, note 75.
39. i.e. talismans.
40. ‘Wherein the lower part is somewhat longer’, as noted by Upton and Aureo (Browne marg.).
41. The altar is described by Casalius and Bosio (Browne marg.); the ‘brazen Table’ is Bembo’s collection of hieroglyphs in bronze.
42. Ezekiel 48.10.
43. i.e. a thought involving ‘types’ or prefigurations. Cf. below, p. 376, note 61.
44. ‘That decussation presented a pleasant and delightful appearance’ (Browne marg., quoting the Latin of Curtius from a statement reported by Eusebius).
45. i.e. ρχoς, ‘orchard’, literally ‘row of trees’ (Odyssey, VII, 112).
46. Iliad, XIV, 123.
47. Odyssey, XXIV, 341; according to the explication by Favorinus and Philoxenus (Browne marg.).
48. ‘In rows’ (Theophrastus, On Plants, IV, iv, 8, and vii, 7–8).
49. ‘συσδς μπλων’ (Browne marg., quoted from Polities, VII, x, 5): suggestive of the quincunx in the planting of vines.
50. ‘Give your rows more elbow-room; but see that the alleys of trees are planted there in squares with equal precision’ (Browne marg., quoted in Latin from Virgil’s Georgics, II, 277–8). On Quintilian see above, p. 320, note 9.